"Yes, sir, through Mr. Franklin Van Burnam."
"And was that the first day of your work there?"
"No, sir; I had been there all the day before."
"You don't speak loud enough," objected the Coroner; "remember that every one in this room wants to hear you."
She looked up, and with a frightened air surveyed the crowd about her. Publicity evidently made her most uncomfortable, and her voice sank rather than rose.
"Where did you get the key of the house, and by what door did you enter?"
"I went in at the basement, sir, and I got the key at Mr. Van Burnam's agent in Dey Street. I had to go for it; sometimes they send it to me; but not this time."
"And now relate your meeting with the policeman on Wednesday morning, in front of Mr. Van Burnam's house."
She tried to tell her story, but she made awkward work of it, and they had to ply her with questions to get at the smallest fact. But finally she managed to repeat what we already knew, how she went with the policeman into the house, and how they stumbled upon the dead woman in the parlor.
Further than this they did not question her, and I, Amelia Butterworth, had to sit in silence and see her go back to her seat, redder than before, but with a strangely satisfied air that told me she had escaped more easily than she had expected. And yet Mr. Gryce had been warned that she knew more than appeared, and by one in whom he seemed to have placed some confidence!